First Kronos in Israel- impressions & questions

[jroujinsky]

Hi,
finally today I have picked up my Kronos 61.
I picked it even before the first one was set on display in the store.
I previusly owned Trinity->Karma->Triton Studio->M3 and played a lot on Oasys my brother has.
So I was well prepare for what to expect from Kronos.

But I was surpised.


1. The keyboad is lighter (in terms of weight) then its predecessors.
2. The screen - it is larger then I thought. Fonts in many places are indeed small, but not a problem for me. Graphical display of instruments makes it very nice.
3. Data wheel - after all discussions on the forum I was prepared for the worst.... But is it perfectly works for me. No issues!
4. Vector joystick - it is light, but after couple times I get used to it. Do not see it as a problem.
5. Startup time - similar to M3 with all extentsions loaded. Not an issue.
6. Pads on the screen - quite useless for me. I loved pads on M3 and Oasys, but pads on Kronos are not good. They are on a separate page and besides the lack of sense of touch,
you cannot simultaneously play pads and do something else on the screen.
7. All banks except U-G - are full. It is a lot of sounds on one hand, and no place to 'play with' on the other.
8. Master volume is a knob and not a slider as it used to be before. It is quite usefull for me thought.

Now the most imporant part the sound.

I found SGX pianos superior to those on Oasys. With certain tweaking (which is itself is a nice game) of physical parameters I achieved quite realistic and very thick sound.
I love it.
The sound of Kronos (as expected) is of the same (or similar) clarity and depth as of Oasys.
BUT - there are a lot of new exciting sounds that make Kronos sound better to my opinion.
Drums are exceptional and realistic.
Found (I played 3-4 hours only yet) some very interesting and attracting sounds and combies that I cannot stop playing.
The keyboard sounds fantastic in most of sounds types.
However guitars are not as good as the rest to say the least.
I think that the best guitars were on Trinity.
Tritons and M3 have lost it..... and Oasys and Kronos did not really improve.

One more issue that I found is memory management.
When preload.* is loaded, 930M of memory is occupied with samples.
So you cannot even load extra brass and woodwinds that are on the disk.
There is a page in global mode that allows you to unload samples per Exi module, but:
1. You do not see how much memory in total samples of an engine (Exi) occupy.
2. You cannot really understand which sounds will be affected by unloadin this or another samples.
3. If yo unloaded someting, you cannot load it back straight away... Unloaded module disappears from the list.

I think that having modular loading of samples (similar to what has been done on M3) will really help.
Instead of loading all samples in one KSC, it would be way easier to have them splitted over number of KSCs per modules so that you could easily decide which ones to load on startup and allow easier loading/unloading.
To the best of my understanding, in order to create such 'modular' KSCs, I would need to work quite hard - load all, unload all except one module, save reminding as KSC.
And do it for all 7 modules....

I will keep on exploring this wonderful instrument further, will check manuals too.
I would like to thank Korg team for such a powerful and inspiring keyboard.
Keep on going!

I will post additional feedback as soon as I go deeper.

Clarification: I am not a professional musician and play for fun.

[Synthvalley]

...I was well prepare for what to expect from Kronos.
But I was surpised....

Congrats on getting your K61. An excellent report on your first impressions - thanks.

Clarification: I am not a professional musician and play for fun.

Always play for fun!!! (whether you make a living from your music or not)

SV

[Brandon Daniel]

Instead of loading all samples in one KSC, it would be way easier to have them splitted over number of KSCs per modules so that you could easily decide which ones to load on startup and allow easier loading/unloading.
To the best of my understanding, in order to create such 'modular' KSCs, I would need to work quite hard - load all, unload all except one module, save reminding as KSC.
And do it for all 7 modules....

The PRELOAD.KSC is set up to load by default from the factory for convenience. If you look in your FACTORY folder, under EXs_Extras, you should find KSC files for the EXs banks individually. You can turn off loading the PRELOAD.KSC file at boot-time in global mode, and load these in a modular fashion, as you desire.

[BergerS]

1st Kornos in Israel! I thought I'd be the one, but I don't have the money now so it will have to wait

I'm also interested in the 88 model and this will probably arrive later.
Did you buy it from the official local importer?
Did you find the price here to be comparative with the price in the US?

Usually the local Korg importer, doesn't sell as much as the other importers so Korg prices in Israel are a bit higher, how do the price in Israel of the Kronos 61 compares to the Motif XF 61?

Anyway, enjoy your new instrument!

[jroujinsky]

Brandon, thanks for valuable advice.
I will definitely check those files.

I think having total amount of memory used by a module is still very handy.

[jroujinsky]

Hi ,
there is a newborn first Kronos song.
It has been made using modified version of I-A116 Tynsel Town combi.

http://www.soundclick.com/player/single ... i&newref=1